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Grand Challenges is a family of initiatives fostering innovation to solve key global health and development problems. Each initiative is an experiment in the use of challenges to focus innovation on making an impact. Individual challenges address some of the same problems, but from differing perspectives.

Nakul Pasricha and team are working to develop special cards, called myTBdoc cards, with unique alphanumeric identifiers printed on them to be given to medical representatives (MRs). TB medicines manufactured by Lupin will also have unique identifiers printed on them. MRs will give myTBdoc cards to private doctors that see TB patients, educating them on correct TB prescription methods. Doctors will then give these cards to new TB patients, instructing them to SMS the unique code on the card (enrolling them in our program) and to SMS the unique codes printed on their TB drugs as they take them. PharmaSecure will then deliver phone interventions, such as reminders to take medicines, follow up calls, and TB health tips via SMS and voice calls. Lupin holds a major market share in the Indian TB drug market, and hence the solution will reach out to a larger affected population easily.

Hilmi Quraishi and team are building a system to enable adherence to TB treatment. The proposed solution is sliced from ZMQ's Fully-Technology Linked Model (F-TLM) for TB treatment and management called the Open and Universal Technology based TB (OUT-TB) Management and Treatment Framework. The framework was developed by ZMQ under its Freedom TB initiative. The proposed solution empowers the patients with active compliance reporting, gamification, and effective self-management of TB treatment using mobile-based tools integrated with miniature DOTS Center Systems and DOTS Provider Toolkit. The solution is based on a bottom-up technology model, which empowers patients to take control of treatment with reminder systems, compliance reporting, dosage tracking, test scheduling, and provider connection for need-based supervision. The solution will help in creating networks of treated patients as new knowledge providers, who will serve as peer educators to provide assistive support to patients in their communities. The approach will make the treatment a community-lead model.

Krishna Swamy and team are building a comprehensive tuberculosis (TB) mobile application to improve TB detection, treatment, and adherence. The team will build upon its open-source, mobile health (mHealth) platform CommCare and predeployed CommCare mobile applications for TB in India to develop a comprehensive, SMS-enabled mobile application for TB detection, treatment, and adherence. Dimagi will work with the International Union against Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases, South-East Asia (USEA) in the Khunti District, Jharkhand in India to design, test, evaluate, and scale the proposed mDOTS application, which will be designed around the World Health Organization's recommended directly observed treatment, short-course (DOTS) protocol for TB.

The study is aimed at developing a novel, low-cost test for pre-term birth (PTB). The proposal is intended to test and validate the low-cost salivary progesterone as a point-of-care (POC) test for detecting risk of PTBs in rural community settings of India. Offering non-invasive sampling of biological fluid that is easy to collect, the study allows validation of saliva from a large cohort of pregnant women residing in low-resource community settings. It is planned to obtain single saliva sample from each participant and determine its predictive characteristics against gestation at delivery and other obstetrics and neonatal outcomes.

This project aims to redefine the receiving material for human waste from water to granular material, thereby completely bypassing the need for water in this process. The project aims to redesign the conventional toilet to use a bed of granular that will ensure that there is no fecal staining of the system, fecal matter is cut-off from vectors, does not contaminate surface waters and that the user is always presented with a fresh, clean and dry surface.

Nishant Kumar and team are building a mobile hardware app which can serve an electronic pill box and can be attached to a conventional mobile phone. The hardware attachment has a rectangular sleek design, which can be fixed onto the mobile phone or can be used separately. A mobile application runs on the phone and controls the hardware attachment via Bluetooth. This product also facilitates a novel points-based incentives system to further encourage the patient towards continued adherence. A complementary mobile phone application runs on the handheld devices of the health worker. The hardware attachment can either be distributed as a standalone product or with a phone.

Gautam V. Soni from Raman Research Institute in India will develop a Resistive Pulse Technique (RPT) for malaria detection based on the established fact that the Plasmodium falciparum-infected red blood cells (RBCs) are about 3 to 10 times stiffer than the normal RBCs, depending on the stage of parasite growth. Therefore, flow velocities of stiffer (infected) and softer (normal) RBCs can be easily distinguished in a simple fluidic channel using RPT. In this project, the difference in these flow velocities would be electrically measured across a spatial constriction to accurately determine the infected stage of individual RBCs. Various aspects of the device would be optimized for high throughput detection, ultimately yielding a portable electrical device capable of high sensitivity detection of one infected RBC per microliter of blood. They will also identify a clinical partner to work with infected blood samples from patients.

This project, undertaken in collaboration with the University of South Florida, U.S., aims to develop and demonstrate an innovative sanitation and resource recovery solution for the slum areas in India.

The project aims to ensure food-security throughout the entire year in a rural district by storing food through an innovative technology known as the Solar Conduction Dryer. It also aims to add extra income to women farmers from the sale of the dehydrated products of this technology, while providing valuable lessons in post-harvest losses.

Anuradha LeleCentre for Development of Advanced ComputingPune, Maharashtra, India

Grand Challenges India

Tuberculosis Treatment

15 Sep 2014

Anuradha Lele and team from CDAC are building an integrated SMS and voice calling solution, which involves mobile-based applications with forms to register patients, a lab form for sputum examinations, IVRS/missed call reminders, and a patient monitoring application for doctors and DOTS workers. The system also plans to include next of kin and friends to enable seamless monitoring of drug intake of the patient.

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